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Little Big Disk Quadra offers 1TB of portable storage
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#2
astromino 
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 10:51 AM
I don't know why Macworld and others are making big stories about LaCie drives, without actually telling people how bad they are. They are being marketed to unsuspecting consumers in places like Apple Retail Stores.
The problem with many LaCie drives is that they fail due to even modest vibration or shock. I had four out of five LaCie drives fail on me, just transporting them in my carry on on a plane or driving to work.
Their drives don't even have specs on how much vibration they can handle!
I will never recommend or even buy a LaCie drive until they change their policies.
Caveat emptor!
The problem with many LaCie drives is that they fail due to even modest vibration or shock. I had four out of five LaCie drives fail on me, just transporting them in my carry on on a plane or driving to work.
Their drives don't even have specs on how much vibration they can handle!
I will never recommend or even buy a LaCie drive until they change their policies.
Caveat emptor!
#3
GrahamAJones
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 11:03 AM
I wholeheartedly agree with astromino. I freelance in many post production companies and most are moving very quickly away from LaCie because of reliability issues.
In addition to the vibration issues, their power supplies are notoriously bad, and hard drives understandably hate fluctuating power. More often than not, if your power supply is going south, it does so intermittently, and your directory will be corrupted when the power fluctuates, causing you to lose much or all of your data.
My two bits...
In addition to the vibration issues, their power supplies are notoriously bad, and hard drives understandably hate fluctuating power. More often than not, if your power supply is going south, it does so intermittently, and your directory will be corrupted when the power fluctuates, causing you to lose much or all of your data.
My two bits...
#4
kennethsteven
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 11:39 AM
I agree with all comments mentioned above.. I am a pro Film/TV Editor, and have used Lacie drives for a long time. They used to be decent, but now they are cheaply mad,e and marketed toward consumers. I have had a few horror stories with failing drives and THE WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE I HAVE EVER RECEIVED FROM ANY COMPANY EVER. My most recent 1TB Big Disk Extreme has been sent back to the factory 3 times, shipped to them at MY COST, and never actually fixed, it still fails, I have just given up. They refuse to replace the drive with a new one. OWC's own external drives are much better, G Drives are also good.
AVOID LACIE!!
AVOID LACIE!!
#7
LRCarter
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 01:22 PM
I live in Phoenix and travel regularly to the middle east with a LaCie 500GB drive in my carry on. I've done this trip four to five times a year with these drives and have never had a failure. I've four LaCie drives now and they all still work. I wonder what else you are doing, because the issue is most certainly not vibration!
#8
g4cube
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 01:30 PM
Hmmm...
No love for LaCie today. Much love for competing brands.
I've got drives from LaCie, WD, G-Tech, Seagate, and even a few build-my-own drives.
In my experience, there are many factors that could lead one to believe a drive has gone bad. I've had a few drives that seem bad on one computer, yet work fine on another. Further, I've not seen any particular trend that makes one vendor worse than the next, provided care is taken when using the drive.
This Little Big Disk seems interesting. Yes, it likely is one of those drives where there are really two drives inside to get to the 1TB capacity point. There is a need for bulk, fast, large storage when editing large number of media files. Surely not a drive to be used for backups.
These double-drive externals seem to be quite popular - they are available form several vendors, including some of the ones mentioned by others.
As I have a number of drives, and don't want down-time during critical projects, I keep spares handy, as well as spare power supplies. Funny, with spares at hand, I seldom have had to use them.
One other thing, I see that some of my power supplies are quite similar - whether from WD, Seagate, LaCie, or G-tech. I mark each of my supplies to I know which adapter goes with which drive.
As far as I know, no drive manufacturer is immune from failures. Just be careful out there - don't move you drive without first unmounting and letting it spin down completely. You don't want to be moving a spinning drive.
For the record, out of my many terabytes of varying manufacturers, architecture, and whether external or internal, there is no alarm here - out of 40 various drives here, I've had the most failures (3) with internals. I've had no bad power supplies. I've had plenty of disk corruption due to errant applications and OSes.
The key to sanity is to have multiple backups and spares.
No love for LaCie today. Much love for competing brands.
I've got drives from LaCie, WD, G-Tech, Seagate, and even a few build-my-own drives.
In my experience, there are many factors that could lead one to believe a drive has gone bad. I've had a few drives that seem bad on one computer, yet work fine on another. Further, I've not seen any particular trend that makes one vendor worse than the next, provided care is taken when using the drive.
This Little Big Disk seems interesting. Yes, it likely is one of those drives where there are really two drives inside to get to the 1TB capacity point. There is a need for bulk, fast, large storage when editing large number of media files. Surely not a drive to be used for backups.
These double-drive externals seem to be quite popular - they are available form several vendors, including some of the ones mentioned by others.
As I have a number of drives, and don't want down-time during critical projects, I keep spares handy, as well as spare power supplies. Funny, with spares at hand, I seldom have had to use them.
One other thing, I see that some of my power supplies are quite similar - whether from WD, Seagate, LaCie, or G-tech. I mark each of my supplies to I know which adapter goes with which drive.
As far as I know, no drive manufacturer is immune from failures. Just be careful out there - don't move you drive without first unmounting and letting it spin down completely. You don't want to be moving a spinning drive.
For the record, out of my many terabytes of varying manufacturers, architecture, and whether external or internal, there is no alarm here - out of 40 various drives here, I've had the most failures (3) with internals. I've had no bad power supplies. I've had plenty of disk corruption due to errant applications and OSes.
The key to sanity is to have multiple backups and spares.
#10
kennethsteven
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 03:41 PM
Well, I do know what I am talking about, I've used many brands, with various configurations, and still having lots of trouble with Lacie. My biggest problem is not that they sometimes fail, but the terrible and snobby customer service/support I get from them when something does go wrong. 3 returns, still have an unreliable drive. And yes I used the proper power supply and tried it on a few other computers etc..
#11
VancouverYogi
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 03:46 PM
To share another experience, I have purchased six LaCie hard drives over the past few years - most recently a 750GB model. Most of them are in constant use all day and several have travelled across Canada with me and have been bounced around a fair bit.
I've never once had a drive fail and continue to recommend LaCie products based on my own experiences.
I've never once had a drive fail and continue to recommend LaCie products based on my own experiences.
#12
g4cube
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 03:51 PM
I've had the opposite experience with LaCie. Friendly, and they track all my products and their history. I've never really had a difficult time with any of the vendors when I call or email for support.
There was one vendor though (a small one) that sent me a new product that had a refurb drive inside. I thought that a bit sketchy.
I may be lucky - or simply courteous. Most of the vendors I have dealt with are quite fair.
Sorry that you've had problems.
There was one vendor though (a small one) that sent me a new product that had a refurb drive inside. I thought that a bit sketchy.
I may be lucky - or simply courteous. Most of the vendors I have dealt with are quite fair.
Sorry that you've had problems.
#13
whitedog
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 05:27 PM
Smaller, "portable", 2.5" drives are almost always more expensive than 3.5" drives of comparable capacity.
There are a lot of inexpensive hard drives available these days. Perhaps the competition has affected LaCie's choice of component hardware. It helps to know what brand drive mechanism is used inside a given brand case - and what shock resistance measures are employed. A good portable drive will have enhanced shock absorbing capability.
These days Western Digital seems to have the best reputation for reliability.
My LaCie drives are doing alight at the moment. But I had a LaCie DVD burner fail on me after only a year and half. Quite disappointing.
I've had several drives fail because the bus on the circuit board crapped out. The drive itself was just fine, but I needed to replace the case to get a new circuit board. In the case of the LaCie DVD burner, it wasn't worth replacing the case because it would have been almost as expensive as replacing the whole drive. A portable hard drive, though, is pricier and replacing the case is a viable option. The way to check if it's the bus on the board that's failed is to connect the drive through one of its other ports - assuming it has any. In one instance the FireWire bus on an Otherworld Mercury On-the-Go drive failed but the USB bus still worked OK. Clearly, then, there was nothing wrong with the drive. This might be a more common problem for a drive that's plugged and unplugged frequently, as portables often are.
There are a lot of inexpensive hard drives available these days. Perhaps the competition has affected LaCie's choice of component hardware. It helps to know what brand drive mechanism is used inside a given brand case - and what shock resistance measures are employed. A good portable drive will have enhanced shock absorbing capability.
These days Western Digital seems to have the best reputation for reliability.
My LaCie drives are doing alight at the moment. But I had a LaCie DVD burner fail on me after only a year and half. Quite disappointing.
I've had several drives fail because the bus on the circuit board crapped out. The drive itself was just fine, but I needed to replace the case to get a new circuit board. In the case of the LaCie DVD burner, it wasn't worth replacing the case because it would have been almost as expensive as replacing the whole drive. A portable hard drive, though, is pricier and replacing the case is a viable option. The way to check if it's the bus on the board that's failed is to connect the drive through one of its other ports - assuming it has any. In one instance the FireWire bus on an Otherworld Mercury On-the-Go drive failed but the USB bus still worked OK. Clearly, then, there was nothing wrong with the drive. This might be a more common problem for a drive that's plugged and unplugged frequently, as portables often are.
#14
g4cube
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Posted 16 June 2008 - 10:00 PM
I had an internal DVD drive fail once. The original internal burner for my Apple G4/400 - the laser diode failed, rendering burning impossible, though it still could read CDs and DVDs OK.
So I looked it up - the failure that is.
Yes, the laser diode in DVDs fail after a while; especially if you have burned a lot of DVDs.
The Apple DVD drive also had an interesting failure mode if the wrong type of DVD was used. Seemed the firmware left the diode on with too much power to the writing laser diode. It didn't take long for the laser diode to burn out.
DVD drives and hard drives are both electro mechanical devices. They will all eventually fail. Power supplies too.
Then again, some drives never seem to fail. I have an ancient LaCie 30MB SCSI drive - yes, 30MB. It still works! But is virtually useless, in these days of USB thumb drives with GBs of capacity. The thumb drives are faster, too!
Funny thing is that this old 30MB drive is considerably larger, physically, than this new Little Big Disk. And the Little Big Disk is just about as expensive as the older and much less capable drive. I paid $699 back in 1989 I think.
So I looked it up - the failure that is.
Yes, the laser diode in DVDs fail after a while; especially if you have burned a lot of DVDs.
The Apple DVD drive also had an interesting failure mode if the wrong type of DVD was used. Seemed the firmware left the diode on with too much power to the writing laser diode. It didn't take long for the laser diode to burn out.
DVD drives and hard drives are both electro mechanical devices. They will all eventually fail. Power supplies too.
Then again, some drives never seem to fail. I have an ancient LaCie 30MB SCSI drive - yes, 30MB. It still works! But is virtually useless, in these days of USB thumb drives with GBs of capacity. The thumb drives are faster, too!
Funny thing is that this old 30MB drive is considerably larger, physically, than this new Little Big Disk. And the Little Big Disk is just about as expensive as the older and much less capable drive. I paid $699 back in 1989 I think.
